COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh: Myanmar’s military portrays its general election as a path to democracy and peace, but the vote offers neither to a million Rohingya exiles, robbed of citizenship rights and evicted from their homeland by force.
“How can you call this an election when the inhabitants are gone and a war is raging?” said 51-year-old Kabir Ahmed in Bangladesh’s Kutupalong, the world’s largest refugee camp complex.
Heavily restricted polls are due to start Sunday in areas of Myanmar governed by the military, which snatched power in a 2021 coup that triggered civil war.
• Heavily restricted polls are due to start Sunday in areas of Myanmar governed by the military, which snatched power in a 2021 coup that triggered civil war.
• In 2017, a military crackdown sent legions of the mostly Muslim group fleeing Myanmar’s Rakhine state to neighboring Bangladesh.
